Influences of Host Density, Temperature, and Parasite Age on the Reproductive Potential of \u3ci\u3eBathyplectes Curculionis\u3c/i\u3e (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae), an Endoparasite of the Alfalfa Weevil (Coleoptera: Curculionidae)

Alfalfa weevil larvae were exposed to Bathyplectes curculionis (Thomson) to determine the effect of host density, temperature, and parasite age on the reproductive potential of curculionis. Percent parasitism was found to be inversely proportional to host density and most of the parasites distributed their eggs randomly regardless of host density. The number of eggs deposited was largely independent of temperature. Peak egg laying was reached in three days from which point the parasite\u27s capabilities diminished with increasing age. The longevity of ovipositing females was shorter than females that were not exposed to larvae

Inoperative Art Education

Increasingly, assessment has encroached on art education, inextricably linking visual arts learning to standardized performances wherein, art educators are becoming technicians accountable to the neoliberal state of education. Under these circumstances, the authors’ hearts and minds are understandably heavy for a postponement of art education as usual, proposing the question: Given the permission to escape art education’s current workings, what might art educators abandon, and how might they undertake this? IN order to delve into this provocation, the authors propose a limbo space of deferral in relation to art education that might inspire any predetermined usages inoperable. From this paradoxical zone, the final destination of art education under economic rationales may be suspended so that art educators might studiously play with its norms. The authors offer poetic and sculptural forms that misuse aspects of art education to explore its possible im-potentialities going against the grain of neoliberal logics

Paying It Forward: A Gift Economy of Poetry and Visual Art Images

As our world has changed rapidly and ineluctably with the COVID-19 pandemic, many are advocating an ethos of generosity and a gift economy, based on generative, creative offerings, as an alternative or balance to the excesses of a mainstream neoliberal exchange economy. What is the gift economy, and how does it entangle us in a fabric of mutual responsibility, obligation, creative practices and love, within the human and greater-than-human world? A Pay-It-Forward New Year\u27s gift game amongst a group of artist/ educators, ongoing since 2014, gives rise to this meditation on the gift economy, based on Mauss, Hyde, Kimmerer, Vaughan and Jordan\u27s work and contemplation of intergenerational, inter-being webs of mutuality. Visual artwork (photography and painting), and poetry and song that inspired and arose from the Pay-It-Forward engagement are part of this piece

Value Co-creation in Fintech Ecosystem: A Case Study of Australia

The development of the Fintech Ecosystem brings radical socio-economic value by increasing entrepreneurship, innovation, and financial inclusion. Yet, there is a lack of knowledge regarding how value is co-created among the actors in the Fintech Ecosystem. The research objective is to conduct an in-depth case study in the Australian Fintech Ecosystem to explore the processes and mechanisms of value co-creation. Our study develops a framework for understanding value co-creation facilitated through digital affordance infrastructure. The study has several potential theoretical contributions to the literature on Fintech Ecosystem development by providing insights into antecedent conditions, mechanisms, paradoxical tensions, and outcome attributes derived from the framework. For practitioners, our framework could assist regulators and organizations within the ecosystem in gaining a deeper understanding of the processes necessary for continued success. Regulators could adjust the intensity of controls in response to environmental uncertainties and tensions

Towards Improved Paper-Based Election Technology

Resources are presented for fostering paper-based election technology. They comprise a diverse collection of real and simulated ballot and survey images, and software tools for ballot synthesis, registration, segmentation, and ground-truthing. The grids underlying the designated location of voter marks are extracted from 13,315 degraded ballot images. The actual skew angles of sample ballots, recorded as part of complete ballot descriptions compiled with the interactive ground-truthing tool, are compared with their automatically extracted parameters. The average error is 0.1 degrees. These results provide a baseline for the application of digital image analysis to the scrutiny of electoral ballots

Characterizing Challenged Minnesota Ballots

Photocopies of the ballots challenged in the 2008 Minnesota elections, which constitute a public record, were scanned on a high-speed scanner and made available on a public radio website. The PDF files were downloaded, converted to TIF images, and posted on the PERFECT website. Based on a review of relevant image-processing aspects of paper-based election machinery and on additional statistics and observations on the posted sample data, robust tools were developed for determining the underlying grid of the targets on these ballots regardless of skew, clipping, and other degradations caused by high-speed copying and digitization. The accuracy and robustness of a method based on both index-marks and oval targets are demonstrated on 13,435 challenged ballot page images